If you have always wanted to teach your child a programming language, there is no better time than the present. Ruby for kids is a site that includes directions and screencasts for a new programmer, young or old, to get started in the Ruby programming language.

Advertisement

The Ruby4Kids website starts off by explaining the prerequisites you need to satisfy on your system before progressing onto the more difficult levels. The screencasts are done in MacOS X but will work on any platform that runs Ruby. The two main packages you need on your system are:

After getting the environment set up, watch the screen casts in sequential order to learn about each aspect of programming in Ruby, centered on game development in the gosu library. This is a fun and interesting way to teach your kid how to program, and it might even help you learn the language if you are not already a Ruby expert.

Ruby For Kids differs from Hakety Hack, another great Ruby learning resource, in a few ways. The first is that they take a game-centered approach to learning, which makes it particularly interesting for children. The second is that it uses gosu rather than the shoes framework, which is a broader GUI interface for ruby.